Next on our Constructicon hit list is the fabricator extraordinaire and self-taught alchemist — Mixmaster.
Of the original G1 crew, Mixmaster was a little bit more memorable than most. Occasionally having some weird voice tics, most of the time he made the screen he was mixing elements, babbling about it, and cackling here and there. Using his cement mixer drum as the catch-all Decepticon Cuisinart, he would also regularly spout acid or whatever he cooked up on his enemies, as evidenced in his bio:
Nothing is safe from him… he will use anything from unliving rock to living robot in making new materials. Uses acids and bonding agents to reduce and recombine almost anything inside mixing drum… a chemistry lab on wheels. As left leg module, combines with fellow Constructicons to form giant robot “Devastator.”
His cement truck mode is par with the rest of the team, with a great solid day-glow green and some decent minor applications here and there to liven him up. The big change here from the norm is that Mixaster is now a front-trough mixer, with his drum riding above the cab. This means that in Devastator mode, it is actually the back of the truck that makes up his foot, a job normally done by the cab. Not a huge deal, but it is a change that has some people ruffled and inspired 3rd party companies to develop some solutions — from new cabs to new Mixmasters entirely.
Like Scrapper, the vehicle is a good comparative size to other car and truck modes, even up to Masterpiece scale — though a little small by real world standards, it’s nothing like the original toys and their massive difference. It would’ve been nice if the drum did something, like conceal Devastator parts or just even turn, but more on that in a sec.
Bot mode makes Mixmaster the second-tallest Constructicon, just a little over Hook, and that makes him a great fit just about anywhere. Good color work here as well, and he does get a bump over Scrapper thanks to some functional elbows. Here again, it’s a simple enough figure, and that is a downer for some, but the truth is, it doesn’t bother me. It does make it a little tougher to make the sell as an individual bot, but then again, there have been several “upsized” legion-class figures done in voyager scale, and he’s clearly more engineered than those.
The articulation, while better than Scrapper, is still pretty basic. And because of that, he does lack some of the photogenic presence of some of his brothers. But you know what doesn’t work as good as Scrapper? That damn drum. Scrapper’s shovel folds up and out of the way pretty good in bot mode. Mixmaster looks like a damn wasp. Dat ass.
For me, though, he hits the right notes as far as size and function go. Here are Canonball’s thoughts on Mixmaster and a transformation demonstration: